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Nope. Well yes and no.
This is how I understand it:
Firstly, we need to understand the relation between the spirit and the flesh. Human beings, created as God's children, have a spirit (which is incorporeal, comprised of elements of the spiritual world) and a body (which is corporeal, comprised of the elements of the material world). Angels, however, are created with only an incorporeal body, aka spirit.
Human beings can interact with Angels because we have spirit. We can interact with the created material universe, because we have flesh. God created human beings as a microcosm of the creation: both spirit and flesh.
Adam and Eve could freely interact with Lucifer, an Archangel, because unfallen and pure, they had no impediments to spiritual communication. This is why they could also freely talk with God the Creator.
But prior to the creation of Adam and Eve, the archangels were at the complete top of the hierarchy of love, they receive God's love more than any other creature. They were the conduit for God's love and commands to the entire angelic world. After Adam was created, with both spirit and flesh, Lucifer felt jealous, thinking Adam was now the top dog, the most beloved of God.
That jealous feeling in Lucifer started to grow, and clouded his judgment. He thought he knew everything, and thought his evaluation that he should still be at the top was correct (it wasn't). He began to feel more distant from God, and slowly felt a lack of love. Then, seeing Eve, who as God's precious daughter was pure and beautiful, Lucifer felt powerfully attracted by her love.
Over time, they engaged more and more, and Lucifer began to tell lies to Eve, eventually seducing her to "eat the fruit".
What is the fruit? The fruit of a tree is that part of the tree where the seed for the next generation resides until it is planted. Here, the "fruit' of the tree symbolizes the love of Eve. When Lucifer tempted Eve to 'eat the fruit' he seduced her into a spiritual sexual relationship. is that possible? yes. The spirit is the model for the flesh. So spiritually, humans and angels have the same normal makeup we see in the flesh.
So while the union between Eve and Lucifer was sexual (love) in nature, it was not material, only spiritual.
But when Even then went to Adam, and tempted him, Eve and Adam "ate the fruit' by uniting in sexual love physically.
These are the two stages by which humanity fell and came under Satan's dominion. First, the 'spiritual fall' and then the 'material fall'.
What about Cain and Abel?
Well, as soon as Adam and Eve fell, God began work to restore them back. This meant reversing the fall. But how could he relate to Adam? God is only good, and Adam was now a mixture of Good and Evil, his good nature originally from God but now he had inherited evil nature from Lucifer, who had become Satan, via the relationship that Eve and then Adam had with Lucifer.
In order to relate to Adam, God symbolically divided Adam into symbolic (or relative) evil and symbolic (relative) good. Cain, the elder, represented the first fall, the one between Lucifer and Eve. That was more evil, because Lucifer was NEVER meant to be Eve's love partner. Abel, the younger, represented the second fall, which although evil, was relatively less evil because Adam was originally created to be Eve's love partner.
So God had Cain and Abel both make an offering, but he could accept Abel's because Abel represented relative good. He rejected Cain's because Cain represented relative evil.
Then, after the offerings, if Cain could humble himself to Abel, and acknowledge that Abel had God's favor, and then ask Abel to intervene for him to God, Cain would have done exactly what Lucifer was unable to do towards Adam. By Cain being humble to Abel, this would reverse the actions of Lucifer being arrogant and instead destroying Adam by tempting Eve.
Gen 4:7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you refuse to do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires you, but you must master it.
What was it for Cain to "do what is right"? It was to, from the position of relative Evil, do the opposite of what Lucifer did, and humble himself to the one that God favored: Abel.
So, in conclusion, Eve's love and sexual relationship (in spirit) with Lucifer could not bear children, because Lucifer had no flesh. However, because Adam and Eve became love partners not under God's blessing, but via Lucifer's temptation, they became the 'children' of Lucifer, and all humanity thus became the lineage of Satan.
This is the reason why everyone must be reborn through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Because we are born into the fallen lineage of Adam and Eve, aka Satan's lineage. This is exactly why we must "be adopted" into God's family.
Adam should have been the one who started God's family on the earth, by resisting temptation, and then after perfecting himself in faith, united with Eve under God's blessing. But he failed, and so Christ had to come as the 2nd Adam, to become the ancestor of God's family. To join that family, we must believe in Jesus and be reborn through the holy spirit.
Romans 8:23 Not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
But here is the thing. Because the Fall took place in two stages - spiritual and then material - likewise, salvation (restoration) comes in two stages: We receive spiritual salvation through faith in Jesus and the Cross, and being reborn in the holy spirit BUT our flesh is still under Satan's claim.
Rom 7:25 Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I serve the law of God, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
This is why the Second Coming is necessary. Christ at the first coming accomplished spiritual salvation (rebirth to God's lineage, spiritually) but had to pay the price of his flesh to accomplish this (the cross). The second coming is to complete the process, and restore our flesh as well as spirit, so that humanity is reborn both spiritual AND physically into God's lineage and out of Satan's dominion.
Until the second coming, everyone is born as an offspring of Satanic roots. But, the framework of Elder brother - Younger brother is continually used in God's providence to reverse the effects of the Fall and build god's foundation. Cain-Abel, Isaac-Ishmael, Esau-Jacob, Ephraim-Manesseh, etc.
The product of the relationship between Eve and Lucifer was the fallen spiritual lineage. The product of the relationship between Eve and Adam cemented that spiritual lineage in to human flesh.
Hope that helps.
Edit: addendum: Even though Lucifer felt jealous and his judgment became clouded, this would NOT be a problem if Eve and Adam kept faith in the commandment. So, God know that Lucifer might develop a problem, but he trusted that Adam and Eve would keep faith in his commandment not to eat the fruit, and know that if they DID keep faith, it would neutralize Lucifer's ability to fall and become Satan.
It was Eve's responsibility to believe the command and NOT respond to Lucifer (not eat the fruit)). But ultimately, it was Adam's responsibility to keep faith and NOT respond to Eve or Lucifer, either. This is another reason why Christ comes as a man: to restore Adam's failure. Christ fulfills the responsibility of man, because he is one in perfect union with God, the Word of God perfected in the Flesh.
That helps, thank you. 🤗
Soon as I read his question I was like, "iron's going to reply" in my mind
And here you are. Pretty spot on analysis. It is great because I feel even a normie Christian could get behind it without raising an eyevrow.
But his user name, who you replied to, is merkava...I bet he would have loved an even longer, crazier, fully esoteric response.
I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, and theological views are normally the object of great passion. As it should be. After all, how we understand the creator and ourselves is at the core of our identity for people of faith.
But I've been looking at this issue for most of my life, and I've found so much confirmation in scripture and in practice that this perspective is what the Bible is really trying to tell us.
The bible (OT and NT) are like the Q drops. Future proves past. There were things that the Israelites couldn't really fathom based only on what Moses shared with them. Likewise, the disciples and believers also could not understand a lot of what Jesus was trying to teach them. Even Paul acknowledged that he only understood in part, and foresaw a time in the future when all would "see face to face" and know just as Christ knows.
At some point, we need to unravel the "G-drops" that God has put into the scripture, a certain amount of it "in code" i.e. in symbolism, but also the underlying principles. It's navigating the symbolic and metaphorical with the actual and literal that is the trickiest aspect. Jesus so often used parable and metaphor, and explained quoting Isaiah:
“The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to those on the outside everything is expressed in parables, so that "‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding"
With regards to an underlying principle, consider the constant stories of the dynamic between elder brother and younger brother, where the elder has to humble himself to serve the younger. When you consider all of providential history as the history of unwinding or reversing what happened in the Garden, the scripture is illuminated in a completely different way.
Example. Mary. Mary was unwed when she conceived Jesus. How does this make sense? By Jewish law, she should have been stoned to death for adultery. So when Mary says "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word" she was actually putting her life on the line. She risked her life to unite with God and believe in his word to her. This is the opposite of Eve, who risked her life to unite with Lucifer, and disbelieve God.
The purification of the womb leading up to Mary is an amazing aspect of OT history. (Jacob and Esau wrestled in the womb. Why? The fight between elder (cain) and younger (abel) had to go back and back finally into the womb, where the fallen lineage took root, to reverse the origins. There are other stories in the OT that indicate this reversal of the fall (Lucifer - elder - Adam - younger) in the lineage of Jesus.
Jesus' birth was not just a magical miracle without reason or foundation. It was a miracle that God created over millenia, in the history of Israel, until finally he could send Christ in a purified womb that Lucifer had no claim over.
I know some of the ideas come out of the blue for many believers, but if scripture was plain and straight forward and easy to grasp, there would not be so much division amidst the Christian community. Denominations, and hundreds of theological divisions exist because the "G-drops" have not yet made themselves apparent.
But as evil crumbles and the Great Awakening proceeds, I believe that Christianity will be revived to a much more alive state and we'll begin to realize that for millenia, we've been waiting for this time.
Excellent analysis. Thank you for that, fren. I learned something today.
I haven't been able to convince myself that sexual act is the temptation that Satan got Adam and Eve to indulge in, because God already blessed his creations with "Go forth and multiply" and you cannot multiply without sex.
I strongly believe that the Original Sin is the sex with the Devil, and Sin refers to the contamination of the blood line because of this. This bloodline is the origin of the 13 blood lines that control the "Cabal" and is the root cause of all our suffering.
What Jesus taught us was to overcome this "Sin" of the bloodline - by showing the reason why this bloodline is evil - by exposing for instance how they use usury to enslave people. If you accept Jesus as your saviour and Lord and follow his teachings, you will effectively free yourself from the shackles of the "bloodlines" (Cabal).
There is a lot of other evidence that we can bring to bear to the idea that Lucifer tempted Eve into a sexual union.
One aspect is to run an analysis on the fruit itself: was it a literal fruit? Symbolic?
Another is an examination of the trees in the garden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What might they symbolize?
Another aspect is the idea of why on earth God would put the fruit in the Garden in the first place.
Then you have the historical reality, of how sex, which should be the most holy and previous act, became so degraded and has been used by evil to corrupt people for millenia.
The metaphor of 'eating' as used in the books of Solomon, etc.
There is a lot more, as well, because it is really only in an overall comprehensive interpretation of scripture that this interpretation makes sense.
On another note, the blessing that God gave Adam, to 1) be fruitful 2) multiply and 3) subdue the earth and establish governance over it is a formula encoding the blueprint by which Adam (and humanity) should fulfill the purpose of creation.
When is a tree 'fruitful'? When it is mature. What is fruit God is referring to? It is the maturing of love, the capacity to love as God loves. So the 1t blessing can be seen as first of all, maturing to become "perfect as your heavenly father is perfect". Second, multiply. If a man perfected in God's love were to unite with a woman perfected in God's love and form a family, the children would already be born with a direct and full connection to God's love, as god would be 100% present in the act of sexual union. Such a family, multiplied through a clan, society, to form nations and the world, would be true family under God. The third blessing is to then engage with the creation from the position of being completed united with God's love, loving and caring for creation with God's heart.
The idea of the fall as the sexual union begins to take more significance in that it was engaged 'out of the proper order'. In other words, neither Adam nor Eve grew to complete maturity and oneness with God, because the period for them to do this required their unchanging faith in the commandment "not to eat the fruit'.
If they fulfilled the first blessing, then the need for the commandment would have evaporated when God blessed them as man and wife to engage in sexual union and form a family under his blessing.
There is no record in scripture of God ever blessing the union of Adam and Eve. in fact, they produced offspring outside of the Garden, AFTER they fell.
All that said, I strongly agree that the issue of bloodlines and lineage and the spiritual dimensions of these is key to the entire providence of salvation.
Anything in the scripture that gives a direct hint that God expected or was waiting for or made anything conditional on Adam and Eve "maturing" in any particular way? Nothing comes to my mind ...
Good question. Well, there are a few elements here, I think.
Firstly, ultimately, we need to grasp that truth has both an internal dimension and an external dimension, just like the cosmos and just like the human being. Religious pursuit (i.e. via scripture and teachings) is how God has been revealing internal (spiritual) truth, and science research is how God has been revealing external (material) truth.
Today we live in a situation where the external truth has been revealed to an off-the-charts level. Whereas our last significant spiritual update was 2000 years ago.
So, in fathoming the truth behind scripture, we also have to apply some of our external knowledge and understanding, including logic.
Looking at every single living creature that God created, every single thing grows to maturity through a growth process that takes time. Everything. And by and large everything follows a pattern: being conceived (or sprouting, eg), developing rudimentary and basic functions, a flourish of growth, then a maturing or ripening, leading to full completion of the growth cycle.
When we consider this, it is completely logical to posit that God created Adam and Eve to grow from being born, through basic development (childhood), growth spurt, then maturing to full adulthood (just like Jesus).
When the scripture says God created or shaped Adam from the dust of the earth, then breathed the spirit into him, its easy to understand this as a metaphorical description of God creating, over time, the human form, and then, at the right time, breathing His spirit into it.
The idea here is that Adam and Eve were born and had to grow, just like every human being including Jesus. But the difference is, before Adam and Eve, no one had God's spirit. They were 'dust' (aka material without the spirit or soul).
In scripture, we also read that Jesus perfected himself through his sufferings. This is direct evidence that although Jesus was born sinless, he was not born 'perfect' or fully mature, [perfected here meaning the development process being fully complete. Jesus himself had to grow and mature physically, but also spiritually, we find.
Also, the fact that Adam and Eve could fall (death meaning becoming separated from God and outside of the realm of God's lifegiving governance) directly implies that they were immature and not complete. If someone who was complete and perfected, aka perfectly good, could fall, this implies God himself could fall, and this we know is impossible.
The fact that they fell and were given guidance meant to deter them from making a fatal mistake shows that they were immature, still capable of deviating from the path of truth.
So in this case, I think that application of logic and understanding of God's entire created world helps us to decipher the meaning behind the symbols and story in Genesis. The scripture itself, however, is very rudimentary, and the fact that the meaning of the Eden story and the 'fruit' has been argued and debated and led to some strange interpretations (it was an apply! No, it was a pineapple!) over millenia is evidence that we have needed to mature ourselves (internally and externally) to get to the point where we could grasp its real significance. I mean, that's my opinion.
We can see from the entire universe that God's own nature has a mathematical aspect to it. The beauty and harmony of mathematics is an expression of God's own harmonious nature.
Another aspect about God expecting or waiting on a level of maturity can be seen in the fact that the providence of salvation has taken time. Why did God wait 2 thousand biblical years before calling Abraham? Why did God wait 2000 years after Abraham before sending Jesus? Logically, we can understand that there is some process that involves time here.
Sometimes I think that the Q drops themselves are almost a symbolic version of scripture. in Scripture, God has made 'drops' that indicate a much larger overall 'map' but sometimes it is only understood later (future proves past), or after certain events have happened.
for me, personally, considering the overall nature of providence as revealed through scripture, I find the view that Adam and Eve fell during a period of immaturity to make the most sense.